Do you have a dashcam? Thousands of drivers in Ireland do, and with good reason. From keeping a watchful eye on your – and others’ – driving, to an insurance safety net if an accident occurs, drivers are opting to install the cameras and they are an increasingly common sight.
Even the Garda routinely seeks footage from dashcams that may help with the investigation of road traffic collisions.
But not all dashcams are created equal. If you are going to install one in your car, you need to make sure it produces footage that is good enough quality should you need it, and most importantly, that it is easy to use and reliable. The last thing you need is the dashcam to stop working just when you need it because it wasn’t set up correctly, or the power died. You just want one that works.
The Miofive 4K Dashcam fits the bill. This sleek camera records footage in high quality, at up to 4K resolution and 30 frames per second, with a 140-degree field of vision. It has a rear screen that gives you a preview of what’s being recorded, with information such as GPS and speed overlaid on the footage. There are some driver-assistance features too, such as a fatigue alarm and a parking mode, which will also act as a sentry for your car, kicking in if there are any bumps picked up by the on-board sensors.
The dashcam has built-in storage, rather than a removable card, so you can transfer any video footage you need off the camera via wifi and the Miofive app.
Set-up is fairly straightforward. Once you have downloaded the mobile app and registered your device, you can calibrate the camera’s video to make sure the Miofive’s AI capabilities will work correctly, such as the alerts for cars ahead moving on.
Then you are ready to fix the camera to the windscreen – this took a couple of tries to get it right, due to the positioning of the USB port needed for power – and you can start recording.
The built-in storage is both a good and a bad thing. You don’t have cards to mess about with or lose, but on the other hand the storage you have on board – 64GB – is all that you have to work with. Given the 4K footage, you might find it fills up quite rapidly. It also means if there is any catastrophic failure of the disc, you can’t easily replace it.
But this is a dashcam rather than a video camera, and the only reason you really need to save footage is if there is an incident. When there is sudden acceleration or braking, the camera will automatically switch to emergency mode – unless you have disabled it – and store it in the EMER folder so it won’t get overwritten by the loop recording. You can also trigger the EMER mode manually by pressing one of the touch-sensitive buttons.
There are voice alerts too, which quickly get irritating. Every time the camera is turned on, a chirpy voice informs you “Miofive continues to serve”. If you make sudden movement, you might trigger a warning, or the previously mentioned EMER mode might kick in. The app will also lay out your driving transgressions for all to see. You can turn down the speaker or mute it completely if necessary.
It’s worth reading up on your data protection responsibilities too. There are limitations to what you can do with the footage from a dashcam without potentially infringing the privacy of others – and falling foul of data protection and privacy laws, even if the dashcam is in a private car. The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner has issued guidance on the topic, and you should read up on it. One of those limitations is publishing dashcam footage on social media that may contain the personal data of others. So before you upload those clips to TikTok or Twitter, think about who else is in them.
The good
The camera itself is sleek and although it is wider than the standard dashcam, careful positioning means you won’t notice it at all. Be careful how you position it though, as the options for adjustment are limited.
The footage is sharp and great quality, although at the highest settings – 4K at 30 frames per second – it should be. It also copes well with the changes in light from day to night.
The not so good
That 64GB of built-in storage will fill up quickly if you are recording at the highest quality and there is no option for external storage. That could also cause issues if there is an error on the internal drive, as it can’t be swapped by the average user.
The positioning of the USB port for power and the LED indicator meant you could easily access one or the other as the driver, but not both. Putting the dashcam where it made sense for the USB port means the LED wasn’t easily visible at a glance, so unless the screen was always on, you couldn’t tell if the device was recording or in sleep mode.
The rest
High on the list of things you should do pretty quickly is change the default password on the camera: it’s a very secure “1234567890″, leaving your camera open to anyone within range.
The app allows you to change the sensitivity of settings for the emergency mode, and make the LCD screen always-on.
The verdict
Smart, sleek dashcam that delivers excellent footage, although the lack of removable storage might be an issue for some.
